Posts by Craig Ranapia

Claims that Labour’s campaign was singularly inept simply don’t hold up in the light of those figures. The fact that Freedland and his Guardian colleagues aren’t laying into Sturgeon and Farron for failing to mobilise their bases indicates that there’s a certain degree of bad faith in this reporting, as there is with most Guardian coverage of Corbyn and his faction.

I don't think Freedland is prone to throwing around words like "deliberate sabotage" lightly, and if you seriously think he and Laura Kuenssberg are fabricating quotes from reporting they didn't do and documents that don't exist, I'm sure The Guardian and the BBC would love to hear from you. That's not acting "in bad faith", that's outright fraud and a sacking offense.

The lesson that the Labour leadership seems to have taken from that turn of events is that coordinating too closely with the Tories toxifies the Labour brand and reinforces the “they’re all the same” strain of cynicism that has been eroding the Labour vote since Blair.

So, you're saying Sadiq Kahn is going to be a one-term Mayor of London for sharing a stage with Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson? Precisely nobody was urging Corbyn and Cameron go on a national snog-a-thon, but Corbyn is reported as refusing to do any co-ordinated campaigning with former Labour leaders.

I Storyfied a pretty compelling stream of tweets from a Northern Irishman called Shocko on the hellish problems the Leave vote poses for his country.

Thanks for putting it together. RTs have been popping up my feed for a while, and every single bloody one of them in heart-breaking. I guess we can just put “the ugly and raw symbolism of thousands of Irish having to negotiate armed guards and checkpoints every day” to the dizzyingly long list of shit nobody thought through.

But does it not seem that Corbyn was a half-hearted-to-useless campaigner on an issue he was clearly not committed to? Shouldn’t he have campaigned properly or tried to win the the argument to align Labour with Leave (which would, to be fair, have been a bloody debacle).

Yes and yes, but there’s still this frankly bizarre narrative among Corbynistas that Brexit was all about “working class rage at Tory austerity” and somehow Labour is going to leverage this into an overwhelming victory at a snap election that will happen by the end of the year. Which is downright delusional on so many levels, it is terrifying.

Something else: I know Corbyn and large swathes of the media have a relationship that could most politely be described as "mutual contempt". But it's a little disingenuous to be pearl-clutching and crying media bias when the Brexit media swooned every damn time he appeared at a Remain even and started with "I'm no fan of the EU, but..."

I don’t quite understand the “not punish” thing? If the EU allows UK-based corporates continued free access to sell goods and services into Europe without complying with EU laws and regulations, then they’ll be “punishing” everybody in mainland Europe by undermining their labour and environmental standards.

Let's get down to the brutal electoral realpolitik. The French presidential and German Bundestag elections are coming up next year. Hollande and Merkel would be politically battered if there was even a hint of the UK being allowed access to Europe on those grounds.

I know the pro-Brexit media love running that "punishment" line, the UK seems determined to act like that ex-flatmate who made you move out but keeps bothering you for money you don't owe, and is still pissy that he has to go buy his own wok.

Toyota originally hedged their bets, and set up a plant in Derby, and one in Paris. Guess which one might now relocate? Rolls-Royce is also highly dependent on mutual co-operation with EADS, a European Union company with primarily French, Dutch and German roots.

And while the Article 50 process may take two years, these companies can't just hang around until the 1922 Committee pulls finger, the Tories decide who their new leader is and the Government deigns to come back to work again.

Please cue the "evil corporate bastards" music if you must. I sympathize, and hope I'll never be the kind of prick who says an awful lot of Leavers have brought it all down on their own heads and Vote Leave just don't care.

But its also more than a little naive to think contingency plans weren't being drawn up for a Brexit from the day the referendum was announced, even if the politicians weren't among them.

As soon as Brexit is final, they’re going to have to start paying the full whack for their healthcare just like every other non-EU citizen with resident status. No matter how hard Boris blusters, its going to be a snowball party at Satan's crib before EU taxpayers quietly swallow the healthcare costs for British expats.

Here's another wrinkle I'd never thought of:

However, more of a worry to retirees will be whether their state pensions will be up-rated annually. At the moment UK citizens who live in the European Economic Area (and Switzerland) have their state pensions protected - they're pegged to wage or price inflation.

Following the vote to leave, the UK government will have to decide whether this will continue or whether UK pensioners living in EU countries should be treated as they are if they retire to Canada, for example, where their pension is frozen.

At the moment, part of the reason that UK pensioners in the rest of the EU see their pension go up every year is because the principle of the single market is applied. That means pensions and other social security payments rise wherever you live. Because this agreement is a mutual arrangement between the UK and the rest of the EU, it is now likely to form part of the renegotiation process.

However, Tom Selby, senior analyst at AJ Bell, says: "While some believe the government will be able to negotiate protections for expat pensioners - it is worth noting the UK has not arranged a similar deal with a non-EU country since 1981."

The pound sliding into the crapper is also not great news if your main (or only) source of income is a British pension or investment income not already paid in Euros.

Thank you, Glenn. Greenwald might want to run his own "elite media" filters under a tap, because I was reading a lot of perfectly legitimate anxiety from PoC, and advocates for workers and migrants about how Brexit rhetoric would translate into cold hard reality. I'm sorry if their tone wasn't suitably chilly for Mr. Greenwald's refined sensibilities, but I guess that's something a white American man never has to see unless he chooses to.

My parents both voted Leave. I asked them why yesterday, after they’d told me they were horrified at people implying they were racist or xenophobic – I did point out that not all the 52% were that, but the proportion that were felt that they had 52% of Britain supporting them now.

Exactly. I know this is harsh, but when you went to the ballot box and voted with people who explicitly and unapologetically are racist and xenophobic as hell? Yeah, I don't think you should expect a lick of sympathy from the Polish and Muslim communities right now.